Lithuanian Minority in Poland - 20th Century

20th Century

During the interwar period of the 20th century (1920–1939) Lithuanian-Polish relations were characterised by mutual enmity. Starting with the conflict over the city of Vilnius, and the Polish-Lithuanian War shortly after the First World War, both governments - in the era nationalism was sweeping through Europe - treated their respective minorities harshly. Lithuanian nationalists resented demands by Poles for greater cultural autonomy (similar to that granted to the Jewish minority), holding that most of Lithuania's Poles were really polonized Lithuanians who merely needed to be re-Lithuanianized. Resentments were exacerbated when Lithuanian Poles expressed a desire to "re-unite" the country with Poland. As a result, the nationalizing Lithuanian state took measures to confiscate Polish owned land. It also restricted Polish religious services, schools, Polish publications, Polish voting rights. Poles were often referred to in the press in this period as the "lice of the nation". When Poles annexed Sejny town and its surroundings back in 1919, repressions towards local Lithuanian population started, including Lithuanian language ban in public, Lithuanian organizations (with 1300 members), schools (with approx. 300 pupils) and press closure, confiscation of property and even burning of Lithuanian books. Beginning in 1920, after the staged mutiny of Lucjan Żeligowski Lithuanian cultural activities in Polish controlled territories were limited; closure of newspapers and arrest of editors occurred. One editor - Mykolas Biržiška - was accused of treason in 1922 and received the death penalty; only direct intervention by the League of Nations spared him this fate. He was one of 32 Lithuanian and Belarussian cultural activists formally expelled from Vilnius on September 20, 1922 and given to Lithuanian army. When 48 Polish schools were closed in Lithuania in 1927, Piłsudski retaliated by closing many Lithuanian educational establishments in Poland. In the same year 48 Lithuanian schools were closed and 11 Lithuanian activist were deported. In 1931 there were about 80,000 Lithuanians in Poland, majority of them (66,300) in Wilno Voivodeship. Following Piłsudski's death in 1935, further Polonisation ensued as the government encouraged settlement of Polish army veterans in disputed regions. About 400 Lithuanian reading rooms and libraries were closed in Poland in 1936-1938.

Second World War put an end to independent Polish and Lithuanian states. After the war both former states fell under the sphere of influence of Soviet Union. Poland was shifted westwards, thus giving up most of the disputed territories in the Second Polish Republic, those territories were mostly incorporated into Lithuanian SSR, itself one of the Soviet republic. At the same time many Poles from the Kresy were forced to choose repatriation west to Recovered Territories, and Polish minority in Lithuania (or Lithuanian SSR) was also significantly downsized. Under the eye of the Soviet Union, the various ethnic groups in the Eastern Bloc were to cooperate peacefully, and that policy, coupled with the population migrations limiting the size of both minorities in respective regions, resulted in lessening of tensions between Poles and Lithuanians. In Sejny and Suwalki districts prohibition to speak Lithuanian in the public lasted until 1950 (on phone in 1990) and it was in the 1950s that teaching of Lithuanian was introduced as a subject in schools.